“I’m Open Come On In” by focuslessness, a daily take over of the Artspace sandwich board. View images from the project, here.

Artist Phil Lique is taking over the Artspace homepage each day, view the project here

The Excess Project presents a series of posters about excuses people give about not composting (designed by Jerome Harris) here.

The concept of “the commons” predates the feudal era in early Germanic and Roman settlements, where communal land ownership prevailed. Originally, the concept referred to the public’s interest and right to access essential natural resources that are held in common and not owned privately, including land, water, animals and fish. Gradually, as royalty and then a central government gained power, the notion of communal land ownership disappeared and the concept of “the commons” evolved.

This exhibition presents a group of artists, based in and around greater New Haven, who make works that operate within the penumbras and cracks of the legal systems that oversee its “commons”. These grey zones are the flexible and the often vague environments from which the show’s title takes its inspiration.

The show identifies four specific sectors and human rights questions addressed by artists practicing in and around New Haven. These include: the material commons (who has the right to order the build and name structures, homes, cities, maps?), the knowledge commons (who has access higher education, public libraries, the internet?), the aesthetic commons (who has the right to define and control image production?) and the affective commons (how are emotions policed and kept public/private?). The essential question that each work asks is: who has the right to have a voice?